[Spivak]

Y'all really want to be mad at this but this is one of those tragic cases where the worst person is correct.

* AI companies claim that training should not be covered by copyright. This says nothing at all about the model outputs which can still violate copyright.

* Curation makes something a copyrightable work. This applies to photographers and machine generated art.

The copyright office's ruling doesn't change that second point although in practice it might raise the bar.

[michaelt]

> Curation makes something a copyrightable work.

Are you sure about that?

I know one or two countries have "database rights" which give a special type of IP protection to collections of methodically collected facts, like digital maps and phone books. But I've never heard of "curation" being copyrightable in and of itself.

[spondylosaurus]

Genuinely asking: would/should the ownership rest solely with the person promoting the model, or would part of all of it belong to the model itself (and/or its creator)? My hunch is that this is a somewhat unprecedented scenario, so comparing Midjourney to a tool like Photoshop wouldn't be completely accurate—in the sense that of course Adobe doesn't hold the rights to things you make in Photoshop—but there could very well be established cases I'm unaware of!

[orwin]

No, curation of a public domain painting does not make your scan of the painting copyrighted, even is someone somehow take your scan in his own book. I think it's called integration works, and basically the copyright remain with who owned them in the first place (cc/public domain images makes genAI a very fun case for IP lawyers. I think the 'nah, not human=not IP' is a good punt).

[EnergyAmy]

I don't think copyright applies to the image itself. The work of curation can be copyrighted, but here it's trivial, just selecting one image. If he published a book of AI-generated artwork, the curation of images could be copyrighted as a whole, but each individual image would not be copyrighted.

[fuzzfactor]

What happens if he doesn't publish the book during his lifetime, and later his estate decides to release it but no matter how hard people try, nobody can figure out whether or not any AI was employed?